UK Food Security Assessment: Detailed Analysis

Content

UK food security is assessed along 6 groups of indicators, with a discussion of past and likely future performance. Several indicators deal with global food security and are not UK-specific.

Findings

Overall, UK food security is found to be favorable.

Global food availability and resource sustainability: food production per capita and cereal yield growth rates are on a long-term upward trend; developing countries have enormous production potential (especially if the efficiency of water use could be improved); the slowing down of yield growth in the EU can be explained by decreasing prices and subsidies, and does not reflect technological or ecological limites; animal diseases kill far less than 1% of the world's animal population per year, and they are unlikely to become a major threat to food production; even at the 2008 peak, real food prices where well below the levels reached during the 70s.

UK availability: the UK is sourcing its food imports from many different countries and can rapidly switch sources of supply if the need arises; reliable trading relationships with the other EU countries provide an insurance; the EU area that could be used for agriculture has decreased by slightly less than 10% from 1975-2007, whereas yield growth has been much higher (about 50% for wheat); the UK could feed its own population, probably even with organic agriculture and easily with traditional agriculture.

The distribution of food supplies to the population (from the farm or the port of entry) is not threatened.

Comment

This is the right approach: a balance sheet against the myth of food insecurity. And it offers an interesting result: even the UK, with its notoriously low level of self-sufficiency, could feed itself. Why then should France worry?